The Poison Leaf
by Rosemary Oliver
Summary: Meet Ivy Caraway, the female Tribute from District 7 in the 60th Hunger Games. She is known as The Poison Girl by her fellow tributes for her extensive knowledge of deadly toxins. Follow her as she endures the grueling Games. ALL ORIGINAL CHARACTERS.
1. Chapter 1

Memories of the bloodbath at the Cornucopia haunted my dreams as I slept, hatchet pressed against my chest. I was laying on a bed of moss, surrounded by tall reeds in a marshy area to the west of the Cornucopia that I had no choice but to run to after I'd managed to retrieve my hatchet. I saw it there on the outskirts of the giant golden horn, and knew it was for me. I was from District 7, a broad swath of a District filled with dense forests we used for lumber. My male counterpart, a fourteen year old boy I knew only as Yarrow, was not as lucky as I was during the bloodbath.

His sallow face flickered in my dreams. He, like most of us in District 7, was poor. I didn't know much about him other than that he was the youngest in a family of seven. I didn't know who his parents were, or who his siblings were. I only knew that they'd never see him again except through the cold, impersonal screen of their television. Poor Yarrow. He made the mistake of rushing the Cornucopia head on.

I was only a few feet away when the curved blade of a knife slashed at the tender flesh of his throat. He collapsed to the ground, terrible gurgling noises emitting from his thin lips. Blood gushed from his exposed esophagus, staining the dirt. I didn't stick around to see who killed him. I escaped the brutality with only minor injuries to my cheek. Someone, a Tribute from District 1, I guessed from her unnatural lime green hair, slashed at me with a dagger in an attempt to scare me away from the hatchet.

I did the only thing I could do. I dove behind her, grabbed the hatchet, and buried it into her spinal column. She died before she knew what had happened. I dislodged the hatchet from her back and ran as quickly as I could. I ran and ran and ran until the gasps of the dying faded away and the metallic stench of blood was buried in the murky scent of the marsh.

In retrospect, coming to this particular spot in the arena was probably a bad idea. From what I'd learned about it, the arena was divided into three sectors. You had the marshlands to the west, a coniferous forest to the north, and something unknown to me to the east. You could see the massive trunks of the trees from the Cornucopia. They were so tall that you could not see the tops of them because they were shrouded in a blanket of eerie fog.

I should have gone there. The forest was my home. I was not accustomed to the wet, boggy ground squelching underneath my boots, to the moisture that covered my skin, making it feel sticky and uncomfortable. I longed for the shade the trees provided. The marshlands were hot, strange bubbling noises gurgling from the bog a few feet away.

I was sleeping a bit more peacefully than before when a spectacular crashing noise came tumbling through the reeds. Despite my knowledge about poisons, I knew that fear was the most potent one of all. Fear was a liability in most circumstances, and in others, fear was your greatest asset. Fear sent adrenaline pumping through your veins. It awoke your most primal instincts, instincts that usually slept dormant in most people.

As Tributes, we were not like most people. As Tributes, we had to kill or be killed, and I was not going to let myself die. Not tonight.

Something stirred in the pit of my stomach as I shot up from my mossy bed. My left hand curled around the rough handle of the hatchet, while my right flew to my mouth to help muffle the sound of my breathing. The smallest of movements, the tiniest of sounds could be fatal.

The crashing grew louder and louder as my intruder came nearer. I held the hatchet tighter, my knuckles blanching paper white. The darkness was thin and seemed to be tinted in green, the blocky shape of a boy ambling around not far from where I sat. Silently, I cursed the night. It was too dark, the figure too obscure. I couldn't throw the hatchet, not yet. There was a good chance, even though my aim was steady thanks to Zander's lessons, I would miss.

I couldn't afford to miss.

My only option was to flee. Fighting in these conditions would be idiotic. The ground was too unstable and the shadows were too dense. But, if I did try to run with the enemy so close, I could have easily been brought down with a carefully placed throwing knife or an arrow. Despite what my instincts told me, I remained in place on the moss, stiff as a statue.

The reeds rustled again. A stricken groan. He was hurt. Good. It would be easier for me to kill him, then. Muscles tense, I readied the hatchet, aligning it with the shambling Tribute ahead of me, my green eyes peeking through the reeds. Zander's smooth voice murmured in my ear as I waited for my enemy to wander within striking range.

_ Aim to kill, Ivy._

Before my name was Reaped, I would have never thought that I would become the murderer that I knew I was. I hunted animals, small game such as rabbits, but that was it. I had never killed a person before the Games. Killing a rabbit was different. It was a food source, a way to survive. In the Games, the rules were flipped. Everything and everyone was out to get you.

Maybe if I had thought of this boy as a rabbit instead of a person, I wouldn't have felt as guilty for throwing the hatchet directly at his looming silhouette. The miniature ax cut through the saturated air with a low whistle. I stopped breathing in anticipation. The boy screeched loudly and fell into what was probably a puddle, judging by the splash.

I waited for him to stop screaming in pain before I scrambled out of my hiding spot, doing my best to keep the sick feeling that almost paralyzed my legs at bay. As it turned out, the boy was much closer than I had previously thought. I had only taken a few steps before my boots stepped on something fleshy.

I crouched down to retrieve my hatchet from his abdomen, expecting to find his body riddled with wounds. It wasn't. The gash where the hatchet had been was the only one he had, save for a few cuts and bruises. He was tall and bulky as I expected him to be, skin drawn taut over bunches of muscle in his arms. His skin was lightly tanned, his hair thick and curly. If my memory was correct, he was Sylvan Mable from District 4.

My second victim.

I shook my ever darkening thoughts away to focus on the task at hand. Sylvan was simply a set-up, a sad little decoy probably forced into playing puppet for the Careers. I'd been hiding from them all day. Ever since I killed one of their own, the green haired girl at the Cornucopia, they decided to make me their main target. I'd been able to evade them thus far, but as I yanked my weapon out of Sylvan's side, something, an arrow, I guessed, whizzed past my head.

Stifling a gasp, I threw myself onto the ground, blood pounding in my ears. I had walked right into a trap. Stupid, stupid, stupid! I should have never attacked Sylvan. I should have just waited for him to leave. My left hand, the one that wasn't clutching the hatchet, was buried in the peaty mud, fingers digging deep into the earth.

"Hah!" I heard a voice snort, dripping with satisfaction. "I knew she'd be here!"

"You didn't know anything," sneered a separate, definitely female voice. "You just saw her run over here from the Cornucopia is all."

"You're just mad because she killed your boyfriend," the boy snickered. Their voices sounded closer than ever.

"He wasn't my boyfriend!" The girl cried out indignantly. "Besides, aren't you the least bit sad that Sylvan's gone?"

"Nah," the boy said. "It's kill or be killed, Jasmine."

There was an evil in his words, a sinister undertone that the girl, Jasmine, was probably deaf to. She trusted him. Trust, like fear, was a liability in the Games. He was going to kill her soon and she wouldn't know it until her throat was slit or her head was taken off.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Jasmine asked carefully.

I closed my eyes, imagining what a kick the people watching the Games were probably getting out of Jasmine's and the boy's exchange. They probably just wanted him to kill her already.

"Nothing," the boy mused.

I started crawling forward on my stomach, holding my breath the entire time. I paused when Jasmine screamed.

"Julius, what are you doing?" She choked helplessly.

"I don't need you anymore, Jasmine. Sorry, your time is up."

One last, strangled scream followed by a sharp snapping noise. My stomach lurched. I didn't have much time before Julius found me. I crawled into the undergrowth as quickly as I could, dragging the hatchet stained with Sylvan's blood with me.


	2. Chapter 2

After he killed Jasmine, Julius was on the move. He crashed through the bog nosily, his boots splashing in puddles. I crawled up to the point where I knew I couldn't crawl anymore. A large, oval shaped swamp opened up before my eyes once I made it through the thickest of the undergrowth. The water that made up the shallow swamp was an unhealthy looking green color, bubbles occasionally floating to the surface. It also stank of decay, indicating to me that it would not be a good idea to go for a swim.

"Where are you, Poison Girl?" Sang Julius, sounding distant. He wasn't very good at tracking. "Come out, come out wherever you are!"

No, thanks, I thought to myself bitterly, chewing on the inside of my cheek in thought. He sounded far enough away, so that if I decided to run, he probably wouldn't be able to catch up with me in time. I wasn't going to risk my chances in the water, so running was my only option. I was quick, lithe, and agile. I was trained by the Shadow of District 7 himself.

iThere is no shame in running, Ivy./i Said Zander's voice as it invaded my thoughts. I whispered these words like a prayer a couple of times before I got to my feet, wincing as my boots sank into the mud with a loud slurping sound. Julius's clumsy footfalls paused, a heavy silence blanketing the marsh.

"I think I found you, Poison Girl," came Julius's snake-like hiss through the reeds.

It was now or never. I had to run. I gulped in one last breath of murky swamp air and squared my shoulders. Somewhere in the darkness, Julius laughed.

"You think you're special, don't you, Poison Girl?" He snarled in a voice filled with hate so strong that it was almost tangible. "Just because your mentor is Zander Quince doesn't mean anything."

Despite the seriousness of the situation, I felt my lips lift in the smallest of smiles. The rest of Panem had been in quite the uproar since Zander, my mentor, won the Games four years ago. He, like me, was eighteen at the time. I remember being at the ceremony in the middle of town, the giant trees making me feel insignificant and very small. My sister, who was only a year younger than me, stood at my side.

I was so afraid that either she or I would have our names Reaped. So scared that I almost threw up on the girl standing in front of me. Relief and a little bit of dread came in the forms of Mira Fersae and Zander Quince, the Tributes selected for the 56th Hunger Games. Both my sister and I turned to look at Mira, who was only a row behind us. Our eyes met and she looked as if she wanted to cry.

Zander stepped forward without so much as a blink, stoic as ever. I'd seen him around, working with his father to provide for his massive family. He was tall and muscular in the way a mountain lion was, with thick and somewhat long black hair that fell into his golden eyes.

Mira was the eighteenth Tribute to die. Zander won using nothing but a few throwing knives and his ability to stay hidden. That earned him fame, fortune, and the title of the Shadow of District 7.

But, I was not Zander. I was Ivy Caraway. And, if I wanted to live past the first night, I'd have to get away from Julius as fast as my legs would carry me. Julius started to say something, but I would never know what it was because I was running headlong through the bog. I wasn't worried about stealth anymore. I was just worried about staying out of range of whatever Julius might have had to throw at me.

My boots were reluctant to let me leave. They stuck to the mud and tripped on the thick roots of the trees, almost sending me flying face-first into the ground. Even so, I pressed onward into the green darkness and as I went, the foliage got thicker. Branches dug into my arms as I fought my way through, leaving me with dozens of fresh cuts.

Behind me, there was only silence. No Julius following in my footsteps, calling out my name. I wanted to believe that he was gone, that he had given up on me. But, that would be a foolish thing to do. Just because something was out of sight didn't mean it was gone, as Zander said. My guard still kept firmly up, I slowed my pace a little, sucking precious oxygen into my burning lungs. When I breathed in, the air tasted of mud, moisture, and decay.

I looked down at my clothes, noticing for the first time just how muddy and torn up they were. My pants, black and baggy and hanging off my hips, were covered in mud, specks of dried blood mingling here and there. My boots were still intact, although barely recognizable because they'd been sloshing through a bog, and my shirt, a simple black sleeveless garment, was torn in more than a few places.

The state of my clothes seemed trivial to the burning in my throat from lack of clean drinking water. I wasn't really hungry because I'd eaten a strip of smoked, utterly dry pork a few hours ago that I'd found in my pack, which was slung haphazardly over my shoulder. For some reason, my pack didn't have any water in it. Only an empty canteen, some stale bread, and a few strips of pork.

The irony of my situation didn't escape me, however. I had ran to a place full of water, water that was probably poisoned with a toxin the scientists at the Capitol had come up with, therefore making it undrinkable. The Gamemakers planned on this, the sadistic bastards. I walked on through the marsh feeling spited and very, very angry. I lashed out at the vines hanging from the trees with my hatchet, all the while trying to stay focused on watching for Julius to reappear again.

"I hope you people at home are happy," I mumbled, my tongue thick. I knew there had to be cameras pointed at me, waiting for something to happen. I thought of my sister and my parents, how they were watching me on our television in our small wooden home. My stomach lurched as memories of them flooded my brain. I hadn't seen them in weeks.

Something wet streaked down my grimy cheek just then. Startled, I looked up to the sky, or what I could see of it. Darkness, branches of trees outlined against the green tinted sky. No rain. Then where was that water coming from? I swiped my thumb across my cheek as more tiny drops came dribbling down. That's not rain, Ivy, I told myself. You're crying when you shouldn't be. You are in an arena with seventeen other people that want to kill you. Stop crying, it isn't worth it. Tears aren't going to help you get away from Julius or win the Games.

I sniffed loudly and wiped the rest of the tears from my eyes, clenching the hatchet with newfound resolve. I quickly erased any lingering thoughts about my family and replaced them with more practical ones. Like Julius and finding a clean water source. I scanned the horizon, looking for a body of water that didn't look like it had a decade's worth of mold growing in it. There was nothing. Just the same bog I'd been inhabiting for the last ten hours.

I had to stop myself from throwing my hatchet in a rather large puddle out of frustration. I was going to die of thirst if Julius didn't get to me first.

"It's okay, I'm going to be fine." I breathed in deep through my nose and exhaled through my mouth, shaking my arms in an attempt to release all the tension that was building in my shoulders. If I had learned anything from the bloodbath at the Cornucopia, it was that chaos solved nothing. It only made things worse. I needed to be calm.

After taking a few moments to recuperate, I decided I was ready to start moving again. I didn't know where I was going, and frankly, I didn't care. I needed to put as much distance between Julius and I as the arena would allow. I passed through acres of marshlands, wading through muddy water that reached my stomach, all because I didn't want Julius to catch me. It seemed like a lot of work just to evade one person.

And, on top of that, I had the other Tributes to worry about as well.

I walked and walked until I couldn't feel my feet anymore, and still no sign of my Career friend. Naturally, I was suspicious. He couldn't have just...disappeared, could he? No, Julius's focus was more in brute strength than stealth. He just...vanished and it didn't make sense.

I shoved Julius away from my thoughts as I settled down on a log a ways away from the moss I'd been sleeping on when he found me. The muscles in my legs tingled sharply as blood rushed through them. Everything was quiet, save for the monotonous croak of a frog. Or, it could have been a frog. It might have been a mutt with razor sharp teeth and the ability to hop fifty feet in one bound.

Needless to say, I hoped it was just a frog.

Sleep threatened to overwhelm me only minutes after happening upon the log. My eyelids were heavy and the delicious shadows of sleep ringed the corners of my eyes like a fog. I forced myself out of a drifting state more than a few times, each time checking to see if the hatchet still laid at my side. It was, of course, stained with Sylvan's and the girl from District 1's blood.

It might have just been the sleep deprivation clouding my judgement and train of thought, but I couldn't find a single shred of remorse in my body for killing them. The Games were realer now than they ever were to me as I sat alone on the log. I didn't like killing people. I was simply gaining an unhealthy tolerance for it. Already. On the first night. There was something wrong with that, I thought vaguely. I was so tired, I could barely see straight, let alone think clearly.

It was a good thing that I didn't need to see or think to feel the cold tip of a knife biting into the skin of my throat.

"Hey there, Ivy," Julius hissed in my ear, pressing the knife even harder into my flesh. I sat completely still, scarcely breathing. "You thought I disappeared on you, didn't you?"

"Not at all," I replied hoarsely, feeling my esophagus move underneath the blade as I spoke. "I was just waiting for you to come back."

With that, I slammed my elbow into his stomach. Julius made a dry grunting sound before stumbling backwards, giving me enough time to throw myself onto the ground, grabbing my hatchet in the process. Unfortunately, Julius didn't give me much time to plan my attack, because he recovered quickly and jumped over the log, diving at me with fingers splayed.

Before he could tackle me, I brought the hatchet back so that it aligned with my ear, and swung.


End file.
